Conductor Antonio Pappano brings a hushed stillness to the timeless Prelude, eliciting a gorgeous sound from the strings as the curtain rises to reveal a shaft of light on a small glass-walled cube (taking the form of an ICU ward), where Amfortas (Gerald Finley in a stupendous, heart-wrenching performance) lies writhing in pain from the wound that will not heal.

The sonorously-voiced Yuri Vorobiev was a totally authoritative, constantly involved Gurnemanz, pleasingly less of the major-domo fusspot he can appear onstage, Yevgeny Nikitin played the mortallysinful Amfortas as less of a whinger, more of a bitter repentant, and Nikolay Putilin was genuinely fear-evoking as the selfcastrated sorcerer Klingsor.

Parsifal is described to Amfortas in a vision as "durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor" ("a pure fool made wise through pity"), and Ventris, in something of a high-wire act, portrayed him as such without mawkishness.

High Hawk produced two other high-class colts by Sadler's Wells, French Derby third Hunting Hawk and Lingfield Derby Trial scorer Hawker's News, while Sunbittern's descendants include Dubawi, High-Rise, Chevalier, Virginia Waters and Amfortas.

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